Patrick Hinchcliff

Compassion for the Self-Critic – with Kristin Neff, PhD

As part of The Self-Acceptance Project, Tami spoke with Dr. Kristin Neff, pioneering researcher in the area of self-compassion, from the University of Texas-Austin. Kristin is the author of the Sounds True audio learning series, “Self-Compassion Step by Step: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself,” a six-hour course on transforming self-criticism into genuine compassion.

Enjoy this video dialogue with Kristin and Tami, which opened the Self-Acceptance Project, a free, multi-week video series featuring psychotherapists, authors, neuroscientists, and spiritual teachers, exploring the importance of bringing kindness and compassion to ourselves in service of others.

The Freedom to Love – with Pema Chödrön

How can we use whatever comes into our lives as a way of opening to love? Do you want to love and connect with others more deeply, but need a little help?

With The Freedom to Love, a six-part online video course, Pema Chödrön invites you to start wherever you are—with any challenges, frustrations, or fears you may be facing—and use them as the launching pad to awaken the natural and boundless capacity of your heart.

The Freedom to Love will engage you with written teachings, video and audio sessions, weekly self-reflection practices, deep meditation, plus two revealing sessions recorded with Pema Chödrön answering questions from a live audience.

If you’ve ever had the opportunity of attending a dharma talk with her, then you know that Pema’s Q&A discussions often reveal her most unexpected, entertaining, and memorable insights.

Here you are invited to come as you are—calm, confused, or just in need of a heartfulness tune-up—to begin unfolding your natural and joyful qualities of compassion, self-acceptance, connection, and unconditional love.

Beyond Body Image – with Sil & Eliza Reynolds

Concerns about body image and physical appearance weigh heavily in the consciousness of our culture and, left unexamined, have a way of generating a tremendous amount of suffering for young women (as well as humans of all ages and genders). Enjoy this short video from mother-daughter team Sil & Eliza Reynolds as they speak about the discoveries they’ve made and the healing they’ve experienced in this area.

Sil & Eliza are the authors of the inspirational book Mothering and Daughtering: Keeping Your Bond Strong Through the Teen Years.

 

A gift of pure rest

No matter how things are unfolding for you at this time, you can receive the secret transmission of the stars, the sun, and the moon: everything here is path, nothing is out of place, and no mistake has been made.

Though it may appear otherwise, you are not broken and are not in need of fixing. Your heart is being polished, your body is being washed clean, and waves of wholeness and integration are re-ordering your world.

Let go of the weary path of needing to change, to transform, to heal, to awaken, to be more spiritual, to be a better person, to accept everything, and to hold it all together. For just one moment, give yourself the gift of pure rest.

As you sink into the core of what you are, open to the breath as it moves in and out of your lungs. Allow your entire being to be infused with your commitment to self-kindness and to no longer abandon the wisdom-field of your immediate embodied experience, exactly as it is.

As things settle inside and around you, you may start to sense the movement of another substance within you, passing in and out of your heart. But, friend, this is no ordinary air. It is love. Come to end one world and to begin another. Please stay close.

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Noah Levine’s Revolution of Kindness

Noah Levine is someone whose name I was familiar with long before I had the opportunity to record with him last fall in Los Angeles. I’d been intrigued by his story. He was someone from my own generation, 20 or 30 years younger than the most prominent American-born Buddhist teachers. He had a punk sensibility and a made-for-movies backstory of anguished teen years filled with drug use, incarceration, and suicide attempts—all chronicled in his first book Dharma Punx.

Through Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, which he founded, Noah has worked to bring the dharma to inner city youths, prisoners, and many others. With his shaved head and tattooed torso featuring a giant OM symbol over the heart, he seemed like the quintessential outsider.

Yes, he was also an insider, inheriting a rich lineage through his father, Stephen Levine and his teacher Jack Kornfield. As I headed west for our recording, I wondered how those two strands would weave together.

Effortlessly, as it turns out. Noah’s desire to make the tools of meditation available to all certainly stems from his own experience as an outsider, and the sense of rebellion that fueled his teen years has not diminished—but now it’s turned inward, toward an inner revolution whose goal is ultimate freedom.

His teachings—especially on lovingkindness practice and what he terms “kind awareness”—fall squarely within the tradition, but have a flavor and energy that I find really resonate for me.

My usual meditation practice, such as it is, is simply to sit and see what arises. The more formal structure of lovingkindness practice took me a little while to get used to, but, while editing the program I recorded with Noah last fall—Kind Awareness: Guided Meditations for an Inner Revolution—I took time to work with all the guided practices, and I found them to be extraordinarily powerful.

In particular, I was moved by the practice of asking for forgiveness from those I’ve harmed, and in turning compassionate acceptance toward myself. Doing so, I discovered a tenderness just beneath the surface—one that, when I softened, brought me to a new sense of openness and quietude. If you haven’t done a guided lovingkindness practice recently, give it a try—especially if you ever find your meditation practice becoming dry or detached. There’s an emotional sweetness to be found here—right on the other side of our vulnerability.

Footsteps of Buddha, United States, 2005

Relieve Anxiety and Depression – a free audio download

Millions around the world suffer from anxiety and depression, and seek relief from the many challenges associated with these difficult conditions. Over the last few decades, both scientific research and clinical reports have pointed to the power of meditation to lessen the challenging symptoms of anxiety and depression, and to aid living a more healthy, productive, and stress-free life.

With this collection of seven guided meditations, Sounds True brings together seven respected psychiatrists, psychologists, and bestselling authors who offer exercises designed to help bring immediate—and potentially lasting—relief from the troubling symptoms of anxiety and depression. Each of these guided exercises can be undertaken in the comfort of your own home, and require no prerequisite knowledge or training.

Receive free access to Relieve Anxiety and Depression: Seven Guided Meditations; simply select the format (“Audio Download”) and click “Add to Cart”. From there, click on your shopping cart in the top right corner, enter your details (no credit card information needed), and this product will be delivered to your Digital Library!

Tracks include:

1. “Soft Belly Meditation” with James Gordon, MD

The author of Freedom from Depression speaks about the role of meditation in the treatment of depression and leads a guided practice for balancing the emotions, body, and spirit.

2. “Body Scan” with Erin Olivo, PhD, MPH

Dr. Erin Olivo, psychotherapist and author of Free Yourself from Anxiety presents a guided body-scan exercise to reduce anxiety and open us to the wisdom of the body.

3. “Guided Relaxation Visualization” with Mark Hyman, MD

The bestselling author and co-medical director at Canyon Ranch in the Berkshires Health Resort in Lenox, Massachusetts, shares a guided relaxation visualization designed to reduce anxiety, lower stress, and cultivate deep relaxation in both body and mind. Excerpted from the audio learning program UltraCalm.

4. “Guided Mindfulness Meditation” with Daniel J. Siegel, MD

Psychiatrist Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, author of The Mindful Brain, offers a guided mindfulness meditation to help bring us into the present moment, thereby allowing us to access a natural and creative healing response to whatever distressing symptoms arise in our lives.

5. “Coming Home to Happiness” with Rick Hanson, PhD

The next guided meditation is from Dr. Rick Hanson, neuropsychologist, bestselling author, and creator of the audio program Meditations for Happiness. Here, Dr. Hanson teaches a guided meditation to help us access our “true home,” finding rest and acceptance in whatever comes our way.

6. “A Pause for Presence” with Tara Brach, PhD

Clinical psychologist and bestselling author of the audio learning series Radical Self-Acceptance Tara Brach teaches us a way to pause in our daily lives, ground ourselves, and start fresh in the midst of any difficult situation.

7. “Healing Lake Meditation” with Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD

The founder and director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and bestselling author of Mindfulness for Beginners guides us through what he calls the “healing lake meditation” to relieve anxiety and stress, helping us contact a place of deep relaxation within that is available at any time.

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